New Year stocktaking

For my parents' Christmas present, I made them a compilation of the songs I remember them singing around the house when I was a small boy. This took several months of delving into the furthest recesses of my memory, plenty of research, then downloading the digital song files and conversion to .wav format and finally burning onto CD.

Among the songs my mother would sing me was I Got The Sun In The Morning And The Moon At Night from the Broadway musical, Annie Get Your Gun.

Taking stock of what I have and what I haven't/What do I find?
The things I've got will keep me satisfied
Checking up on what I have and what I haven't/What do I find?
A healthy balance on the credit side.

New Year is a good time to express my thanks for my lot in life, for health, for happiness, family, friends, interesting work - and being in the right place at the right time.

Easter will be late this year - not until 24 April (the latest it can be is 25 April). Which means Lent starts late too (9 March). At this time of year, I start slowly adjusting to the coming time of fast. This year will be my 20th Lenten fast in a row. The hardest thing for me to give up is caffeine; once my current stock of Lavazza is used up, I will swap it as my breakfast beverage for instant coffee which will get progressively weaker until it goes altogether. Giving up caffeine suddenly leads to massive headaches.

This morning I weighed in at 71.5 kg (11 st 3lbs), and girth around the fattest part of my tum measured 97.5cm (38.4 inches). [Over 102cm /40 inches increases danger of heart disease.] My Body Mass Index* is currently 22.6, near the middle of the 'normal' range. A return to sit-ups (20 a day) and press-ups (ten a day) has begun with the New Year and will increase regularly, to be continued through to the end of Lent.

Looking back just two years, I see that I have slimmed down by 2.5cm (just under an inch) around the middle and I'm 3.5 kg (8 lb) lighter today than I was then, BMI is lower by a healthy 1.1. also in post-Christmas, pre-Lent condition. Regular cycling is certainly one contributing factor; I'm also sure that annual fasting for 46 days couldn't hurt.

[* To work out BMI, you need to know that I'm 5ft 10ins, or 1.78m tall.]

This time last year:
A walk in the wild winter woods

This time two years ago:
Now that's what I call winter vol. 12

This time three years ago:
When the day starts getting longer